Aaulin's Discovery

Aaulin is an elf who was born with an al­most su­per nat­ur­al flex­i­bil­i­ty, his body was so soft and his joints were so elas­tic that mod­ern hu­man doc­tors would be re­al­ly wor­ried for his health.

How­ev­er, in the el­ven tribe where he was born, called the Ori­en­tal tribe, the elves were per­fect­ly aware of such con­di­tions in some chil­dren and saw them rather as a bless­ing, if treat­ed prop­er­ly. But it was very im­por­tant to dis­cov­er this hy­per­flex­i­bil­i­ty in a child at a very ear­ly age and ed­u­cate him and his fam­i­ly about the pre­ferred lifestyle that would make his too soft body in­to one of his strongest sides.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, in the el­ven tribe, such peo­ple formed a spe­cial line of con­tor­tion­ists: re­spect­ed per­form­ers who could amaze peo­ple by do­ing in­cred­i­bly flex­i­ble pos­es, very of­ten as part of re­li­gious rit­u­als to turn these rit­u­als in­to some­thing re­al­ly amaz­ing and di­vine.

Emaryl, the teacher, a very flex­i­ble elf who was wide­ly hon­ored for his amaz­ing knowl­edge of the body, be­longed to this line and one day he dis­cov­ered young Aaulin. Since then Aaulin has been prac­tic­ing the art of soft body with Emaryl.

How­ev­er, be­fore Aaulin there was no such a thing as "the art of soft body". There were two sep­a­rate prac­tices: con­tor­tion and waist cinch­ing. Con­tor­tion in­clud­ed the stretch­ing of one's spine, legs, shoul­ders and fin­gers. Un­til the per­son had enough flex­i­bil­i­ty to do some re­al­ly amaz­ing pos­tures. Waist cinch­ing was a prac­tice of wear­ing a tight belt to make the waist very small. Peo­ple with such small waists could be of­ten seen in tem­ples, most­ly priests and spir­i­tu­al seek­ers, and they were as a rule very calm and med­i­ta­tive. These two prac­tices, con­tor­tion and waist cinch­ing, were done sep­a­rate­ly and were seen al­most as two dif­fer­ent, "in­com­pat­i­ble" arts.